


Say goodbye to the world you thought you lived in

by orphan_account



Series: Here we are but straying pilgrims [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha!John, Brief discussion of mpreg in chapter 2, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Omega!Sherlock, Omegaverse, implied non-con so I used the tag, no explicit non-con, non-neurotypical Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8414584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The next try. Follows a month after the events of chapter 2 of the previous work in this series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, the title is from a Mika song. I'm sorry.  
> This series is going to get darker before it (if it?) gets lighter. I can't promise a light at the end of this metaphorical tunnel, but if you've stuck with me I thank you for reading.  
> Part III in a fic series heavily based on recent events in my life that I am processing via fic-writing.

Sherlock slammed the bathroom door shut behind himself, darkly glad that he at least had no clothes on to bother flinging off. He shoved the shower curtain aside and turned on the hot tap, not bothering with the cold one to even the temperature out. No, for this he needed the water scalding hot.

 

He thought he heard the rustling of sheets from the room on the other side of the door, and then there was something shouted in John’s voice that the combination of the shower and shut door mercifully drowned out. He didn’t bother to answer.

 

The mirror began to fog and Sherlock stepped into the shower. He grabbed whichever bottle was closest, not bothering to check what it was, and smeared-- _apparently shampoo--_ all over his stomach, legs, and lower back, scrubbing furiously at the mess as needles of hot water prickled over his skin.

 

Momentarily satisfied with that, he closed his eyes and turned his face up towards the stream. Only then, safely cocooned in steam and blisteringly hot water, did he allow the tears out.

 

They emerged in ungraceful, gasping gulps, and hot water seared into his nose and eyes and mouth as he sobbed, burning him alive from the inside out.

 

Later, he would not be quite able to say how long he had stood there, charring his skin red with too-hot water and boiling away the pain and frustration of the morning. But eventually he emerged, raw and aching, and wrapped himself tightly in his oldest, thinnest towel before heading to the bedroom to find some clothes.

 

He didn’t look at the bed as he shuffled through the door, the snugness of the towel impeding his steps, but worth it for the litany of _safe close snug_ that sang through his mind when he wore it, and hid himself behind the open door of his wardrobe as he hunted for a soft pair of pants and pajama bottoms. The second-thinnest t-shirt was already hanging over the edge of a dresser drawer, right at shoulder height, and he pulled it on as he finally let the towel drop.

 

As he bent to pull on the pants a ray of pain seared through him, and Sherlock gasped, unable to stop himself. He dug his nails into his hands and forced himself to bend again to put on the pajama bottoms.

 

Dressed, Sherlock came to realize that John had been unusually quiet throughout this process. He peeked around the edge of the wardrobe door and saw that the bed was empty.

 

Not bothering to straighten the sheets, since dressing had made him realize that bending over enough to reach them was going to be surprisingly painful for the near future, he padded out to the living room.

 

“John?”

 

One glance around the flat told him what he already knew to be true: John was gone.

 

Sherlock flung himself face down onto the sofa, and a few determined tears leaked out against his will, soaking into the pillow. Everything had been for nothing, and now he had to _bloody well do it again_ tonight. Or possibly not, depending on if John saw fit to return to the flat, or apparently ever speak to him again.

  
_Bloody frail transport_ , he muttered.

 

 


	2. The comfortable words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter picks up in the afternoon of the same day chapter 1 occurs on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dealing with some consequences. Sherlock and John have a conversation that Sherlock doesn't want to have and that John never thought he would need to have.

Sherlock woke to warm hands on his back. His face was pressed into the sofa cushion and someone had slid his t-shirt up to expose his skin, and warm hands now kneaded his aching muscles. Sherlock struggled to roll over, but the warm hands (John’s hands, of course, who else would his body tolerate even unconsciously? He would have flung himself across the room in a panic, soreness aside, if he had woken to anyone’s hands but John’s on him.)

 

“Shhh,” John said, digging his thumb into a tight knot of Sherlock’s aching deltoid. “Let me help you with this, and then I’ll help you with the heat. It’s still going on, isn’t it? You must feel awful,” he continued, tracing the outline of freckles across Sherlock’s shoulders. “I hope you knew I meant to come back. I’m not so cruel as to leave you to suffer through the rest of it alone.”

 

“Hmm,” Sherlock hummed, the pillow muffling his voice. “I didn’t know, actually.”

 

“It’s going to be different, this time,” John said, his hands moving a little lower, past Sherlock’s shoulders, which were no longer screaming for relief and only ached almost pleasantly. “I’m going to make this so good for you,” he whispered, leaning in and brushing the curls at the back of Sherlock’s neck with his nose.

 

Sherlock shivered.

 

“Do...do I have to do anything?” Sherlock asked, after he was certain he could trust his voice again. “Because I’m really not sure I can move much at all right now,” he admitted.

 

“Not a thing, love. You don’t even have to roll over if you don’t want to,” John promised.

 

“That’s all right then.” Sherlock mumbled. “Everything hurts and I’m so tired.”

 

“I know. I can help with the first one, and then we’ll see about getting you into bed so you can get some proper sleep,” John replied.

 

\--

 

“You said I didn’t even have to roll over. Liar,” Sherlock accused.

 

“I said you didn’t have to, not that I wouldn’t stop you from doing it if you decided you wanted to,” John protested.

 

“I feel disgusting.”

 

“By now,, we’re both disgusting. I’m surprised you aren’t already in the bath.”

 

“Don’t know if I can stand up.”

 

“I can help with that. Come on, let’s get you into a bath.”

 

“And tea,” Sherlock demanded.

 

“Yes, alright,“ John laughed. “I’ll get you settled in the bath and then bring you tea.”

 

John sat up gingerly, transferring his weight off of his omega’s aching hips and knees as gently as he could. Sherlock grumbled when John offered him a hand to help him stand up, but allowed John to pull him upright, and leaning heavily on John the pair of them shuffled towards the bathroom. John nudged the door open with his foot and Sherlock sat down heavily on the closed lid of the toilet while John ran a bath.

 

“This,” Sherlock said, holding a jar of chamomile bath salts out to John.

 

“Course,” John replied. “It’s our routine by now, isn’t it?” He poured the salts into the water and swirled them around with his foot until they dissolved. “Alright, I think it’s ready. Up you get.”

 

Sherlock stood, pulling off his clothes and letting them puddle on the floor, then sunk into the warm, fragranced water. When John didn’t immediately move to follow him, he turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Are you getting in with me or what?”

 

“I thought you might like it alone for a bit this time,” John said, a note of uncertainty creeping into his voice.

 

“We always take a bath together after it ends,” Sherlock insisted. “You have to.” Suddenly remembering his other demand, he amended “but not before tea.”

 

“Oh, you,” John said fondly, but disappeared to the kitchen to make the tea.

 

Sherlock sunk up to his chin in the bath, scrunching his knees together so that as much of himself as possible was submerged in the delicately scented water. The morning had required a scaldingly hot shower, but the evening was was best followed by a warm chamomile bath. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift.

 

The teakettle dinged in the kitchen, and a few minutes later John reappeared in the doorway, holding two cups of milky tea. He set them on the side of the tub, ruffling Sherlock’s hair as he settled into the bath behind him. For a moment they were both silent, soaking in the twin comforts of tea and bath, before John eventually spoke.

 

“I only meant what I said about the bath earlier because this morning was…what it was.”

 

“That made no sense.”

 

“You know what I meant.”

 

“Fine. This morning was what it was. It’s over and so is that idiotic heat. If I’m very lucky, what we did in the sitting room will have worked and in nine months I can go back on heat suppressants and will never have to do that again in my life. Right now I’d like to forget that anything happened differently than usual this time, if that is alright with you.”

 

John frowned, and then was immediately glad that Sherlock couldn’t see his expression. “There are some things I still need to say to you.”

 

“Don’t be boring, John. I don’t want to hear it.”

 

“Sherlock, I can’t just--” John broke off, frustrated. When his voice was level again, he continued. “I can’t let that go. You can blame heats or hormones or whatever you want, but I can’t leave it at that. What I did, I never thought that I would be capable of--”

 

“Of doing nothing that isn’t completely legal, and more common than you probably think it is, and that no one in the world except yourself would fault you for!” Sherlock cut in, turning around as best he could in the confines of the bath to stare levelly at John and causing some water to slosh over the side in the process. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

“I’ll be better, I swear,” John said. “It won’t happen again. I don’t know what to say other than that.”

 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, then turned back to face the taps and leaned back into John.

 

“Are we done with this conversation yet?”

 

He asked it in the supremely irritated tone that he usually reserved for scorning the deductions of Scotland Yard’s finest, and John smiled in relief.

 

“Depends. If you let me wash your hair I promise never to bring it up again,” John offered.

 

“Done,” Sherlock agreed immediately. “Use the seaweed extract one, please. I used the blue one this morning after...after, and I don’t want to smell it again.”

 

“Course,” John said, reaching for the bottle, and knocking his half-empty tea cup into the tub in the process.

 

“John, gross,” Sherlock complained.

 

“Do you want me to wash your hair or not?”

 

Sherlock muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “not sure what the point is anymore” or perhaps “not if you’re going to profane the sanctity of the post-heat bath with disgusting tea water,” but eventually turned into a grudging “yes, of course.”

 

John smothered a smile that Sherlock would have been miffed at had he seen it, then fished the upended tea cup out of the bath and set it on the floor before massaging the dark green gel into Sherlock’s curls.

  
Sherlock leaned back against John, humming softly, and closed his eyes.


	3. I miss that too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This month is different, and not for the reason Sherlock expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for sticking with this fic! It's starting to go in an entirely different direction to what I had anticipated when I started writing it, but I'm happy with how it is going.

“He’s getting away,” Sherlock mumbled, snapping his magnification phone attachment off his phone and stuffing it into a coat pocket.

 

“Well? Come on! This is our only chance to catch him before he kills again,” Sherlock said when John didn’t budge from where he sat beside a skip. “He’s going straight to where he’s got the last person he kidnapped, I know it. We have to get there before he can kill them.”

 

“He’s not the only thing that’s getting away,” John grumbled. “Are you sure about this? It could go really badly.”  _ For you, if he gets ahold of you and we can’t restrain him somehow, _ John mentally added but did not say. 

 

Sherlock did not deign to reply to that. 

 

“You’re in bloody heat!” John hissed. “I don’t know how half of London hasn’t jumped you already, being out here in the open like this! This is insane and unsafe.”

 

“I told you before we left the flat that I made a batch of the ‘bonded alpha’ pheromone and doused myself with it,” Sherlock snapped. “I don’t smell interesting to anyone in London, yourself included obviously,” he finished. “You know I hate having these anyway. At least this way I can get through the symptoms on my own and still be able to do something useful.”

 

“I could...” John started. 

 

“No, you could not help,” Sherlock interrupted. “Let me catch him before he kills this time, and then we can go home and you can ‘help’ as you so crassly put it. I’m not giving a serial killer a free pass this week just because I happen to be having something as inane as a heat!”

 

He turned on his heel. “Now are you coming with me or aren’t you?” 

 

John sighed and followed. 

  
  


\--

 

“Let me look at your leg,” John said, closing the door to 221B behind himself. 

 

“I haven’t even taken my coat off and you’re trying to get my clothes off. Give me five seconds before we start this idiocy up again?” Sherlock answered. “It was a scratch, I’m fine, there’s probably already a scab on it. You don’t need to look at it.”

 

“Has it been cleaned? No. Are you a good judge of how bad an injury is? No. Let me look at your leg or--”

 

“Or what, John? Or you’ll make me? Dull.” Sherlock hung his coat on the back of the door and loosened his scarf, then twisted the ends into his hands. 

 

“No, I mean...” John’s voice was shocked, hurt. Sherlock sighed. 

 

“Really? You’re offended at that? The things you’ve done and you’re offended by that?” 

 

John glared. “That’s different. Get those off or I’m taking them off. I’m looking at that cut before we do anything else.”

 

“Fine.” Sherlock kicked his shoes off with more force than necessary. “Not here, in the bathroom.”

 

“Bedroom, and now.”

 

“FINE.”

 

\--

 

Sherlock peeled back the sheet carefully, avoiding the plaster on his leg and gingerly shifting his weight to the injured side. The cut that the serial killer had slashed into his leg was both deeper than he had tried to make John believe and shallow enough that he didn’t need stitches, and Sherlock was secretly grateful that John had cleaned and dressed the wound. 

 

As for what John had done after that….well, it had been quick, and for that Sherlock was also grateful. And while last month he had sought solace in the routine of the post-heat chamomile salt bath with John, this time he found himself craving solitude, and not wanting to have to explain it even to John. 

 

He tiptoed to the bathroom and shut the door softly behind himself before turning on the lights. 

 

What was there to say to John? They had agreed, and so the attempts continued, one per month, one per heat. Every month he hoped that this would be the month it would work, and that he could finally start counting down the months until he could go back on suppressants again and put this entire ordeal behind himself. 

 

The stretch marks, the possibility of permanent scarring, the blood loss, and the screaming horror of a child, he carefully avoided thinking about.

 

It would be fine, Sherlock assured himself, settling into the bath. Surely this month it had worked, and the little cells were already doing their work. They had to be. He tipped his head back onto a folded-up towel and closed his eyes.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” John said quietly.

 

“What?” Sherlock lifted his head slowly off of the towels, wincing as his sore neck protested. “When did you come in here?”

 

John sat against the side of the tub, his back to Sherlock, turning his phone over and over in his hands. 

 

“Awhile ago. You’ve been asleep.”

 

“Shouldn’t do what?” Sherlock asked.

 

“All this,” John said, waving his hand at nothing in particular.

 

“I don’t--I don’t--,” the words caught in Sherlock’s throat. Did John mean what he thought he meant?

 

“We were friends first,”  John said, continuing as though Sherlock had not spoken. “We aren’t friends right now. At least, not like we were. I want that. I miss that.”

 

“John, are you--” 

 

“Let’s not do this anymore,” John said in a rush. “No more heats. I’ll get some suppressants from the pharmacy tomorrow. I’m….I don’t like how things have been. That’s on me, I know. So...let’s fix this.”

 

“I don’t--”

 

“All I’m asking you to do is stay, and give this a go.”

 

Sherlock turned around and folded his arms over the towel, then looked up at John, resting his chin on his arms. 

 

“I don’t know if I believe you,” he said. He stretched his toes. “The water’s cold, will you pass me my towel?”

 

John’s eyes crinkled a little. “Stand up,” he said. Sherlock did, and John folded him into a warm towel. “I ran it through the dryer when I woke up and you were gone.”

 

“Hmm.” Sherlock closed his eye and leaned into John. “I miss that too,” he said quietly.


End file.
